Seats I am sitting on a chair that has ceased to rock since. It’s made up its mind, and neither the neighbour’s barking dog nor the battered fallen mango could persuade it, otherwise. I imagine: if it were meant as a boat could it have made the same choice, when its feet were carved for waves, and sand, hardening—an indicator for impotence. If I were a chair, I would like to be this one. A patient listener despite missing a few bones. Will I not creak at all the lives my sitter is not living, who knows? Yet I know this: while I can, I want to hold you the way steady chairs do. If I shake, while you are in my arms, do not take that for diffidence, rather get to know the girl who carved a bell at the branch of a tree, in her passing. What do you feel when you remember the night you laid your head by my knee. I’m sorry. I know I never made an effort to apply varnish on my words. For why make a surface gleam when in the inside it has long proceeded collapsing. In the meantime, will you grant me this: sit a while beside me when I invite you to sit, if it were not for the mosquitoes and the evening cold. I know you are spent, love, so am I, but together, I believe four legs can be steadier than two.

joust

VOLUME 1

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